By Nina Borowski & Tokunbo Salako & Amandine Hess with AFP
Published on
A summit duel between two great giants of Western sculpture is currently taking place under the Louvre pyramid in Paris.
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In one corner stands Michelangelo. In the other Rodin. Between them are around 200 works in various materials ranging from marbles, bronzes, plasters, terracottas, casts and numerous drawings.
Separated by 350 years, the aim of the exhibition is to compare the art of these two geniuses, based on their main subject, the “living body”.
“Michelangelo’s style is very much a Renaissance style, the precursor of Mannerism, and in that sense his style is quite different from Rodin’s, who also, in his own time, really overturned the codes of sculpture,” says Chloé Ariot, curator at the Rodin Museum and curator of the exhibition.
“We are coming out of a century in which sculpture oscillated between a very strong tribute to classicism, with a renewed look at Antiquity, a strong inspiration from Antiquity, and at the same time, all the contribution of Romanticism, which is very much in the representation of expressions, of passions,” adds Ariot.
The common thread running through the exhibition is the life and inner energy of the body. Beyond their form, the sculptures express a psychic life: thoughts, dreams, suffering.
The Louvre also recently hosted two dance performances, inspired by paintings and sculptures by the two artists and performed by dancers from the Paris Opera.
“When we started thinking about this evening with the director of dance, José Martinez from the Paris Opéra Ballet, we imagined a show devoted to duets,” says Luc Bouniol-Laffont, director of the performing arts department.
“This exhibition, in a way, is a duet between two great sculptors, and so it’s an evening made up of great duets that are somewhat mythical from the great repertoire of the Paris Opera Ballet, but also with a creation by Yvon Demolle, a dancer from the Paris Opera Ballet, who has imagined a creation that links, echoes and dialogues with the art of Michelangelo and the art of Rodin.”
By bringing Michelangelo and Rodin together, the Louvre is offering a cross-disciplinary reading of the history of sculpture.
The exhibition does more than simply compare two artists: it shows how the same question – representing the living – crosses the centuries.
Michelangelo Rodin “Living Bodies” is at the Paris Louvre until 20 July, 2026.
